International
Linkages of Islamist Terrorist outfits

Afghanistan

Afghanistan continues to be a
source of trained terrorists for campaigns in Mindanao in the Philippines,
Chechnya, Tajikistan, Jammu
and Kashmir, Bosnia, Egypt, Algeria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Bahrain,
Israel, Lebanon, Sudan and Turkey. Furthermore, it continues to be a
major source of weapons for South Asian terrorist/insurgent groups.
The LTTE
in Sri Lanka as well as several Kashmiri terrorist outfits continue
to benefit from the weapons pipeline of the anti-Soviet Afghan-Mujahideen
campaign. A group of proficient LTTE terrorist trainers have trained
Kashmiri and other foreign mercenaries in Kashmir in the various training
camps located in Afghanistan.

Australia

Six persons with links to terrorism
were deported from Australia during the year 2000. Two deportees were
linked to Middle Eastern Islamist terrorist groups, and two more were
linked to the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and one to the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
in Sri Lanka. Prior to the Sydney Olympics, several Afghans were arrested
in New Zealand for suspected involvement in a plot to blow up the Sydney
nuclear reactor during the Olympic Games. A number of terrorist groups,
both regional organizations such as the Abu Sayyaf Group and transnational
groups such as Osama bin Laden's
Al-Qaeda network were under
critical surveillance during the Sydney Olympics for possible acts of
terrorism.

Bangladesh

Among the more significant Islamist
fundamentalist parties active in Bangladesh
are the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), the Muslim League, Tabligh Jamaat, Jamaat-e-Tulba
and the Jamaat-ul-Muderessin. These fundamentalist parties have undertaken
intensive propagation activity in order to influence large sections
of the populace. The JeI is the most influential and well-organized
Islamist fundamentalist party in Bangladesh. Islamic countries, particularly
Saudi Arabia, have provided catered to a major proportion of its financial
resources. Pakistan utilises the erstwhile connection between the Jamaat-e-Islami
(JEI-Bangladesh) and the intelligence services of the two countries
to support an Islamist subversive agenda in many regions of India, particularly
in the areas bordering Bangladesh in the North Eastern States. Most
of the Islamist fundamentalist groups including the JEI-Bangladesh,
Tabligh Jamaat, Jamaat-e-Tulba and Jamaat-ul-Muderssin, long established
linkages with fundamentalist organisations in Pakistan. Pakistan also
substantially funds these organisations, including the JEI-Bangladesh
and its student-front, the Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS). These fundamentalist
organisations gained influence during the earlier reign of Begum Khaleda
Zia when the citizenship of Professor Golam Azam, former Chief of JEI-Bangladesh,
was restored. Professor Golam Azam is reported to have maintained close
links with fundamentalist organisations in Pakistan.

Certain Indian radical Islamist
outfits, including the Muslim Liberation Tigers of Assam (MLTA), headed
by Mohammed Abdullah Hazarik, Adam Sena, headed by Farook Khan, All
Assam Muslim Liberation Front (AAMLF), Muslim Liberation Army (MLA),
Muslim Volunteer Force (MVF), and the Muslim United Liberation Tigers
of Assam (MULTA), which have been formed in India’s North-East have
developed links with the JEI-Bangladesh. Some of the cadres of these
outfits routinely cross over to Bangladesh for receiving arms training
at the ICS camps.

Consequent to the Awami League
government of Sheikh Hasina Wajed coming to power in June 1996, the
fundamentalists organised themselves under the banner of the Jamaat-e-Islami,
Islami Oikya Jote and Islami Sashantantra Andolan. The flows of financial
assistance from countries like Saudi Arabia, Libya and Iran have given
fillip to their activities. Several pro-Islamist relief organisations
like the American Red Crescent, Association of Preaching Islam (Bangladesh),
Benevolence Foundation (USA), etc, have been active in Bangladesh.

A number of transnational Islamist
terrorist groups, including the Al-Qaeda of Osama bin Laden, have established
a presence in Bangladesh in alliance with the various fundamentalist
organisations in the country. Osma bin Laden donates funds to the Pakistan-based
terrorist outfit Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM),
which has contacts with the Dhaka-based Bangladesh Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami
(HuJ).
The HUJ was established with the aid of Osama Bin Laden in 1992. Imtiaz
Quddus is the General Secretary of the outfit. It has an estimated strength
of about 15000 cadres. It has established strong linkages with the Inter
Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s external intelligence agency.
The HUJ maintains several terrorist-training camps in the Chittagong
Hill Tracts (CHT). The cadres of the outfit who style themselves as
the ‘Bangladeshi Taliban’ infiltrate regularly into the eastern corridor
of India to maintain contacts with terrorist and subversive outfits
of the region. The covert activities of Osama bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda
came to the fore during the visit of the then United States President,
Bill Clinton, to Bangladesh in March 2000. One of the reasons for the
cancellation of President Clinton's scheduled visit to Joypura village
and the national memorial at Savan was due to the threats that emanated
from the Al-Qaeda.

On January 9, 1999, police in
Chittagong arrested Syed Muhammad Nurul Afsar, a man with Libyan links,
on charges of smuggling firearms and explosives into Bangladesh. He
had visited Czechoslovakia in June 1998 to purchase weapons and explosives,
which were then shipped to Bangladesh. Afsar, a ‘high ranking terrorist’,
belongs to an obscure outfit called ‘Freedom in Bangladesh’ dedicated
to turning the country into an Islamist theocracy. Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami
(HUJ) was assigned the task of recruiting Bangladeshi and Indian Muslims
to fight in Jammu and Kashmir under the command of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.
Reports in 1999 indicated that the HUJ planned to recruit 5,000 terrorists
from the madrassas of Bangladesh. Another 10,000 were to be recruited
from among the Muslim refugees at Rohingya, who fled the Arakan province
of Myanmar and were staying at Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. The Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami,
also maintains six terrorist camps in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT)
of Bangladesh, where the cadres are imparted arms training. Several
hundred recruits have also been trained in Afghanistan. Harkat activists
frequently cross over to India for terrorist activities.

The ISI is deeply involved with
the Islamist terrorist outfits operating in Bangladesh. On June 2000,
a radiogram intercept revealed that the ISI had set up a base in the
Kurigram and Rangpur areas of Bangladesh near the Coochbihar border.
The ISI, in collusion with the HUJ, is also imparting training in the
use of sophisticated arms and in arranging blasts in camps set up in
Rangmari, Sundermari, Masaldanga and other villages.

In January 1999, Delhi Police
arrested a Bangladeshi national, Sayed Abu Nasir and charged him with
planning bomb attacks on the US consulates in Chennai and Calcutta.
Two kg of RDX explosive was also seized from him. Nasir is a member
of the Lashkar-e-Toiba
and had entered India in October 1998 along with six other terrorists.
Three of his Indian contacts were arrested in Siliguri near the Bangladesh
border, but the others believed to be four Egyptians, a Sudanese and
a Myanmar national, are still to be traced. In the latter half of January
1999, police in Bangladesh arrested five persons suspected of plotting
the January 18, 1999-assassination attempt on celebrated poet Shamsur
Rahman. The arrested persons belonged to the Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami
(HUJ), which has been building up its operations in the country since
the early 1990s. In the next few days, police picked up an interesting
melange of people, who included apart from two more Bangladeshis, an
Afghan, a Pakistani and two South Africans.

Bosnia

The build-up of new Islamist
outfits was completed in Bosnia- Herzegovina in 1995. These forces are
closely associated with the Armed Islamist Movement (AIM) and Islamist
international terrorism. These new activities were conducted under the
guidance of the new Islamist headquarters in Teheran and Karachi, decided
upon during the Popular Arab Islamic Conference (PAIC) convened in Khartoum
in the first days of April 1995.

Canada

An Algerian-Islamist militant
cell, using Canada as its base, was ascertained after the December 1999-discovery
of explosives in a rented car driven by Ahmed Ressam. Ressam, a 34-year-old
Algerian, was convicted on April 6 for ferrying bomb-making material
across the US-Canadian border two weeks before the massive Y2K New Year's
celebrations. Ahmed Ressam, arrested while crossing the US border from
Canada with explosives in December 1999 has been linked to the Al-Qaeda
terror network. Available evidence has indicated that he illegally acquired
a Canadian passport, as well as other identification, including a driver’s
licence. In cooperation with an accomplice, he acquired and also partially
assembled bomb-making components and planned to transport them to an
unknown US destination.

On February 15, 1999, PKK leader
Abdullah Ocalan was arrested in Kenya. The next day, violent PKK supporters
rioted in Montreal, and a day later in Ottawa, injuring several police
personnel.

On April 5, 1992, the Iranian
Air Force conducted a bombing raid on an MeK base in Iraq. Hours later,
forty Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK) supporters attacked the Iranian embassy
in Ottawa, injuring several persons. Simultaneous attacks were also
carried out on Iranian Embassies in thirteen other countries around
the world. These incidents have indicated that MeK and PKK support networks
in Canada are directly linked to their parent outfits abroad.

Hani al-Sayegh is a member of
Saudi Hizballah and a suspect in the deaths of nineteen US soldiers
during a June 1996 truck bombing at the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi
Arabia. Consequent to the bombing, Sayegh fled Saudi Arabia and traveled
through several countries before arriving in Canada in August 1996.
Upon his arrival, al-Sayegh attempted to integrate into the community,
studying English, and also working part-time. He was arrested in March
1997, deported to the US in June 1997 and finally deported to Saudi
Arabia in October 1999 to face criminal charges.

Aynur Saygili, a PKK member,
entered Canada under a false name in May 1996 and became involved in
the Kurdish Cultural Association of Montreal. She was arrested under
a Canadian Immigration Security Certificate in November 1996 for being
part of the PKK, and that similar to another PKK member arrested in
1994, Hanan Ahmed Osman, she had been sent to Canada to gain control
of the Kurdish community for the PKK’s own financial and strategic operations.

Mahnaz Samadi, identified as
an MeK leader, was responsible for directing certain MeK operations
from Iraq. She is reported to have been sent to the US, and later to
Canada to act in an organizational capacity. Samadi was arrested in
December 1999, and in February lied to the Canadian Immigration and
Refugee Board regarding her membership in the MeK in order to be released
from custody. She was finally deported to the US in April 2000.

Many other terrorist outfits
like the Hizballah, Hamas and PKK have established a presence in Canada.

Central Asia

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
(IMU), a coalition of Islamist terrorists from Uzbekistan and other
Central Asian states opposing Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov's secular
regime, is linked to the Taliban and has over a thousand terrorists
near the borders of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. With bases in Afghanistan
and Tajikistan, the IMU’s area of operation also includes Uzbekistan
and Kyrgyzstan. It receives support from other Islamist extremist groups
in Central and South Asia. IMU leadership often broadcasts its statements
over the Iranian radio. Channels for trafficking drugs from Afghanistan
to the Central Asian countries are, for the present, reported to be
controlled by terrorists of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Terrorists
led by IMU's Dzhuma Namangani control the northern section of the narcotics
traffic from Afghanistan. Apart from trafficking drugs, they also sell
them in Kirghizia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Reports also indicate
that the IMU uses bases in Tajikistan's eastern mountains to launch
some of its attacks. Aside linkages with the Chechen terrorists, the
IMU also maintains links with Muslim Uighur separatists in China’s western
Xinjiang province, bordering Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
According to recent reports, the newly renamed movement (The IMU recently
broadened its aims and declared itself to be the Islamic Party of Turkestan)
currently brings together Islamist terrorists in the Xinjiang Province
and Jammu and Kashmir in a much-expanded network. While harbouring pan-Central
Asian ambitions, their ‘goal’ is said to be an Islamist state stretching
from western China to the Caspian Sea. Reports have also indicated that
IMU is currently fighting alongside troops of the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan’s northern Takhar Province.

Chechnya

Shamil Basayev, one of the leading
‘commanders’ of the Chechen terrorists, Ameer Khattab, ‘commander’ of
the Islamist Army (Foreign Mujahideen Forces) and Abu Daba, Khattab's
closest aide and the envoy of the Saudi Arabian Al Haramein, a religious
extremist organization, have sustained their sophisticated political-military
campaigns against Russian authorities primarily through complex financial,
logistical and operational linkages developed with various Wahhabi extremists
from West Asia, as also Afghan mercenaries.

Their financial support is derived
from several sources. Some Chechen terrorist outfits are reported to
siphon oil from the Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline, which traverses their
territory. Abduction and narcotic trafficking also provide them with
additional revenues. Furthermore, the large Chechen Diaspora has also
provided financial support to them. Islamist terrorist outfits from
the Middle East have provided training and significant financial resources
to the Chechen and Dagestan terrorists. Many mercenaries and volunteers
from Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan are in these regions indulging
in terrorist violence alongside the Chechen and Dagestan terrorists.
Moreover, the Chechen terrorists have received some support from foreign
Mujahideen with extensive links to Middle Eastern, South Asian, and
Central Asian Islamist extremists as well as Osama bin Laden. The Chechen emigrant
community in Jordan, particularly strong with approximately 10,000 members,
has also provided considerable material and ideological support.

An international charitable Islamist
organization, the Al-Haramein (Al-Haramein Islamist Foundation) was
set up to provide support for the terrorist movement in Afghanistan
in the 1980s. It currently renders financial assistance to many Islamist
terrorists worldwide. The Foundation has representative offices in Albania,
Macedonia, Croatia, Kosovo, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
Kenya, Somalia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Over the past few years, it
has been also been operating illegally in Russia, particularly in the
Chechen Republic where, under the guise of an international charitable
organization, it has been carrying out anti-Russian subversive activities.
Sheikh Akil ben Abdul Aziz al-Akil heads the Al-Haramein Foundation
as its general director. The Foundation’s headquarters is in Riyadh,
the capital of Saudi Arabia. Al-Haramein is also providing strong financial
support for religious groups of Wahhabi extremists in Dagestan. Through
its branch in Baku, the Al-Haramein has transferred large sums of money
to the primary centres of Wahhabism in Dagestan stationed in the Republic’s
capital Makhachkala and in the village of Karamakhi in Buinaksk district.

The Al-Haramein has set up a
fund in support of Chechen terrorists, titled as "Foundation Regarding
Chechnya," a branch of which opened in Azerbaijan at the end of 1999.
The new fund is financed through the Al-Barak bank. The fund sent 25
special ‘operations’ to the regions bordering Chechnya. The ‘operations’
are charged with the task of establishing secure supply routes for the
terrorists’ military units in Chechnya. The transnational corporation
Dailah Al-Baraka Group comprises the aforesaid bank and a host of companies
in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Turkey, Malaysia, South Africa, Tunisia and
other countries. The corporation’s Chief, Hafez Abu Bakr Mohammed was
one of the main sponsors of ‘President’ Aslan Maskhadov’s (‘chief of
staff’ of the Chechen armed forces) visit to Washington in 1998. The
Saudi financial syndicate, the Al Baraka Investment and Development
is involved in engineering channels for funding the Chechen separatists.
In 1999, experts of the US-based Islamist Al-Baraka bank visited Chechnya.

Al-Haramein emissaries have also
established links with the Taliban regime as also with Pakistan for
acquisition of large units of heavy weaponry for the Chechen terrorists.
Middle Eastern terrorist leader Abu Said paid a special visit to Pakistan
in order to arrange deliveries of armaments to Chechnya and also to
recruit Pakistani mercenaries and qualified sappers. The weaponry, money
and combat gear was to be dispatched to Chechnya via Turkey and Georgia.
The Al-Haramein’s emissaries are also engaged in extensive espionage
activities in Chechnya in order to assist the terrorists in the region.

China

The Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous
Region, has certain Islamist extremists, some of who have links with
Islamist terrorist outfits in Afghanistan, Jammu
and Kashmir, Turkey, the Middle East, and many of the Central Asian
republics. There are linkages between the Uighurs and Osama bin Laden and Pakistani terrorists.
Islamist militancy from Southeast Asia has links with certain groups
in the southern Yunnan province. There have also been instances of civil
violence by the ethnic Hui Muslims from nearby Hebei province in the
eastern Shandong province. Chinese authorities in Xinjiang have discovered
a large cache of explosive material including a large number of detonators,
firearms and ammunition in June 1997. These seizures were later linked
to the existence of the Party of Allah (Hezbollah), a fundamentalist
Muslim party fighting for independence with about 1,600 members. Similarly,
the Xinjiang Liberation Front, another Islamist radical outfit, is mobilising
Uighurs from all over Central Asia. Chinese officials believe that these
terrorists are being trained in Afghanistan and use money from the Afghan
heroin trade to fund their activities. All these developments led to
the revival of the demand for Eastern Turkestan. Some of the supporters
of the Eastern Turkestan Movement (ETM) can be found in the rank and
file of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Hezbollah in Lebanon and the
Hizb-ul-Mujahideen,
a Pakistan-based outfit operating mostly in Jammu and Kashmir. Some
of these Uighurs are also getting their religious education in seminaries
of Pakistan and Egypt.

Islamist terrorist and fundamentalist
outfits are currently active in Hyderabad, Warangal, Nalagonda and Mahboobnagar
districts of Andhra Pradesh. As a part of a larger design to construct
an network in India for spreading terror and violence in the country,
the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s external intelligence
agency, has begun to utilize various Muslim dominated regions (Hyderabad
in southern India is a significant place in the ISI schema) as their
operational base. On February 6, 2000, at the end of its three day annual
conference at Muridke near Lahore, one of the prominent ideologues of
the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT),
Abdul
Rahman Makki announced that the outfit had a new unit functioning
in Hyderabad, which would soon be liberated from ‘Indian rule’.

Reports indicate that various
Islamist terror and fundamentalist outfits have successfully penetrated
the approximately 20-lakh Muslim populace that reside in the old city
in Hyderabad. In January 1992, a leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation
Front (JKLF)
had disclosed that the outfit had set up a base in Hyderabad primarily
due to its large Muslim populace. In July 1993, police arrested two
ISI agents in Hyderabad. One of them was the ‘resident’ ISI agent for
Andhra Pradesh. He confessed that he had been working for the Lashkar-e-Toiba
(LeT)
and had been entrusted with the task of recruiting Indian Muslim youth,
sending them for training and bringing them back. In July 1998, four
LeT terrorists were arrested in Hyderabad. In August 1999, interrogation
of the 11 arrested LeT terrorists revealed that one of them was assigned
with the task of building of bases in Hyderabad. He was asked to recruit
Indians whose family members were killed in communal violence.

On February 29, 2000, a press
release in Hyderabad claimed the formation of Indian Muslim Mohammadi
Mujahideen (IMMM). The organisation, the release said, was "committed
to eradicate the western culture from India". It claimed that cinemas
which ran pornographic films had been bombed as a first part of this
campaign. Azam Ghauri, the leader of a LeT cell in Andhra Pradesh and
a native of Warangal, was the ‘commander’ of the IMMM. He was later
killed in an encounter in Karimnagar on April 6, 2000.

Gujarat

Gujarat has currently become
a significant centre for subversive activities by various Islamist fundamentalist
organisations and Pakistan-sponsored terrorist outfits. Since 1992,
the State’s borders with Pakistan, including the 1600 km long coastline,
has been subjected to an incessant subversive activity by these outfits
who are utilizing the State as a launch pad for various terrorist operations
in the rest of India. Particularly, the Kutch region, Saurashtra and
Junagarh have witnessed growing incidents of smuggling of arms and ammunition
as also narcotics and fake currency. The marshy area of the Rann – the
512 km border with Pakistan - comprising of several hundred smaller
channels that merge into the three large creeks: Sir Creek, Kori and
Mainwari. Kutch render themselves efficaciously for smuggling with the
help of small fishing boats called hodas. Smugglers and gunrunners from
Mumbai and Dubai are reported to frequent this area. In the aftermath
of the demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992, the smuggling of RDX
and other explosives began to be routed increasingly through the Gujarat
coast to Porbander in the Saurashtra region. Indeed, a large cache that
arrived through the border reached Bulsar in south Gujarat was consequently
transshipped to Mumbai where they were used to engineer the serial blasts
that killed more than 200 people and left thousands injured.

In August 1995, security force
personnel arrested 10 Pakistani nationals in the Kutch region. Six AK-47
rifles were also seized from their possession. The Inter Services Intelligence
(ISI), Pakistan’s external intelligence agency, has been able to set
up well-organised bases in the State. For example, Abdul Ghani alias
Abdullah, a Kashmiri terrorist collected RDX from Nepal and set up bases
in Ahmedabad. He also supplied RDX for the Delhi and Dausa blasts of
May 1996. He was later arrested by the Gujarat police in June 1996.
On May 24, 1996, the State police arrested four Jammu and Kashmir-based
terrorists who consequently confessed that they had been sent by Colonel
Farooq of the ISI to set up a base in Ahmedabad. They also revealed
that they had been asked to recruit the youth in Gujarat and Maharashra
for terrorist training in Pakistan. In March 1998, police killed six
criminals allegedly belonging to Dawood Ibrahim gang (who is reported
to have escaped to Karachi following the Mumbai serial blasts which
he is alleged to have masterminded with the able assistance of the ISI)
in the walled area of Ahmedabad and seized a huge cache of arms and
ammunition including 10 kgs of RDX. On March 24, 1998 a huge cache of
arms, ammunition was recovered from the Gandhinagar and Daryapur areas
of Ahmedabad. The weapons were reportedly supplied by the ISI for subversive
activities. In July 1999, six terrorists arrested in Ahmedabad confessed
during their interrogation that the ISI had trained them in explosives
in Pakistan. In the same month, two suspected ISI agents were arrested
in Bhuj and 24 kg of RDX and two Chinese made pistols were seized from
their possession.

On July 24, 2000, five suspected
ISI agents were arrested in Sarwej. 25 Chinese made mousers, 5 magazines,
200 rounds of ammunition and 6 kg of heroin and six AK-47 rifles were
recovered from their possession. On April 2001, seven persons, including
four arms-dealers allegedly having links with the ISI were arrested
from various parts of the capital city Ahmedabad. On May 27, 2001, a
Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist was arrested with an AK-56 rifle at the Hajipir
area of Rann of Kutch. During the course of interrogation, he is reported
to have said that he had acquired training in terrorist activities at
Muzaffarabad in Pakistan controlled Kashmir (PcK) and had ‘sneaked into
India for a special task'. This was the third case since March 2001
when the ISI sent armed terrorists into the Kutch region.

The ISI is also trying to create
communal tension with the help of the recently proscribed fundamentalist
outfit like the Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).
There has also been a proliferation of madrassas (religious seminaries)
in the border areas of the State. These madrassas are reportedly securing
funds from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan as also
from certain gulf countries. Available evidence suggests that the ISI
is also using the Gujarat border to revive terrorism in Punjab. Official
sources have indicated that the ISI had reportedly asked the Babbar
Khalsa International (BKI) terrorists Wadhawa Singh and Mehal Singh,
both believed to be in Pakistan, to revive terrorism in Punjab. In January
2000, five terrorists of the BKI with alleged links to the ISI, who
were planning to launch major countrywide terrorist activities by making
Gujarat their base, were arrested from the Narol area of Ahmedabad.
Furthermore, the underworld criminal networks have been activated for
this endeavour. In February 2000, the Gujarat police unearthed a nexus
between Punjab terrorists and the underworld with the arrest of Ibrahim
Khan alias Chacha Hasankhan Bhati who was the contact between the BKI
and the Thailand-based Chhota Rajan gang. Police also arrested seven
terrorists of the BKI and three criminals of the Chhota Rajan gang.
Reports indicate that outfits like the Khalistan Zindabad Force, (Punjwar
faction), based in Sialkot have also been instructed by the ISI to exploit
the porous Gujarat border. In August 1999, Chhota Shakil of the Karachi-based
Dawood Ibrahim gang is reported to have visited Kabul twice in order
to place orders for arms and ammunition as also to meet Osama bin Laden.
Consequently, a red-alert was sounded in the border areas, especially
in the Rann of Kutch, which is considered to be a critical route for
the Dawood gang's arms traffickers. The carriers coming from Karachi
cross the Kutch border into Gujarat and make their way to Ahmedabad,
Dawood's biggest base in India after Mumbai, from where they are distributed
throughout the country.

The ISI is also involved in circulating
fake Indian currency through this porous border. They are reported to
have set up a printing press in Sukkur from where fake currency notes
are to be circulated in the country via the Shahgarh Budge near Jaisalmer
in Rajasthan through Gujarat. On April 9, 1997, a person with counterfeit
currency was arrested in Bhuj. He admitted that he received this currency
from Pakistan. On November 3, 1998 police seized ‘Rs’. 27,49,700 worth
of counterfeit currency from an aircraft coming from Sharjah to Jamnagar.
Furthermore, the operational ISI units at Sialkot and Karachi were coordinating
the attempts of various terrorist outfits - Khalistani and Kashmiri
- to breach the western coast of the country. At least three Islamist
terrorist outfits -- Lashkar-e-Toiba,
Ahl-e-Hadis and Tablighi Jamat -- were active in Kutch. Of late, the
Jamaat-e-Islami's student wing has also become active in this thinly
populated district.

Mumbai

Mumbai, the capital of the State
of Maharashtra, is increasingly being used by Islamist subversive outfits
to consolidate their base in India. In Mumbai, the Inter Services Intelligence
(ISI), Pakistan’s external intelligence agency, operates through local
gangsters, underworld criminals, smugglers as also fundamentalist outfits.
The nexus between the underworld criminals and the ISI came to light
after the March 12, 1993-bomb blasts in which more than 200 persons
were killed and over 700 injured. Investigations have revealed that
underworld criminal Dawood Ibrahim with the assistance of the ISI had
engineered the blast. On January 13 1994, police arrested a terrorist
of the ‘Crush India Movement’. Reports have indicated that he had links
with terrorist outfits like the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen
and the Allah Tigers. He was planning to engineer bomb blasts in Gurudwaras
(Sikh religious shrines) in Mumbai. On February 22, 1998 there were
three bomb blasts in Mumbai in which four persons were killed. Ten persons,
including a Pakistani national, were arrested in this connection.

Northeast

Terrorist
operations in India’s North East are orchestrated in good measure
by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan. The ISI led Pakistani
network supplies arms to Bangladeshi refugees. Dhubri and Nalbari districts
in Assam, and Tura in Meghalaya, have been identified as important areas
of ISI activities. The Muslim-dominated villages in these districts
are the focal points. A number of sophisticated arms, including light
machine guns, have already reached the Muslim immigrants. The transit
zones for supply of arms are Mancachar, Mahendraganj and Fakirganj ghat
in Dhubri district.

Some of the 20 terrorists involved
in the Coimbatore blasts of February 1998 have admitted that they had
undergone training in Bangladesh.

Abu Nasir, a Bangladeshi Laskar
who was arrested in West Bengal revealed names of many Laskars who were
operating in the country. The Siliguri corridor has been targeted by
the ISI through the Laskars for establishing bases. The Chief of the
Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT),
Saeed visited Bangladesh in 1998 and managed to recruit Bengali Laskars.
Bangladesh has been a shelter for ISI operatives, United Liberation
Front of Asom (ULFA)
activists and other militants of the northeast.

Top United Liberation Front of
Asom (ULFA) leadership has been in close touch with certain officers
of the Pakistani High Commission in Bangladesh, who arranged for their
passport in various names and sent them to Karachi.

In September 1999 it was revealed
that the ISI had prepared a blueprint to form a Muslim State in the
North-Eastern region. In Manipur, four Muslim militant outfits have
been active. These are: People's United Liberation Front (PULF), North
East Minority Front (NEMF), Islamic National Front (INF), Kanglei Yaol
Kanba Lup (KYNL-Muslim Wing).

The Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM)
is one of the more active Islamist terrorist groups in Assam. It is
also involved in trying to integrate the Islamist militant outfits operating
in Assam, including the Muslim United Liberation Front of Assam (MULFA),
which is active in the districts of Nagaon and Morigaon and the Peoples
United Liberation Front (PULF), active in the areas bordering Manipur
and in Barpeta district. The HUM has a base at the Nurani Madrassa in
the Yatriari area of Bangladesh and transport newly recruited HuM men
from India to Khaka through the Assam- border. The recruits are then
taken to Pakistan for training. Several youths from Assam are trained
in camps in Pakistan and the Amir (chief) of the HuM in Assam is Mohammed
Fakurddin alias Akram Master, who now lives in Pakistan, while the Naib
Amir (deputy chief) Muslim Ali was from the Krishnai area of Goalpara
district.

There are linkages between powerful
terrorist outfits in the North East and the ISI. The ISI is known to
have provided training to the ULFA militants, especially in terrorist
tactics, counter intelligence, disinformation and use of weapons. Pakistan
issued Paresh Baruah and a few others for their visit to Singapore,
Thailand and other countries. Through these links the ISI is able to
funnel money to the ULFA. Several madrassas/mosques sponsored by the
ISI in the Sylhet and Cox's Bazar areas are being utilised to cache
arms procured from Thailand and Myanmar by ULFA. At least 14 Muslim
fundamentalist organisations are now working actively in Assam.

The task of cutting off the Chicken’s
Neck portion, which joins the North East to the rest of India, was assigned
to the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and was planned along the lines
of the Kargil operation. It was fully supported, covertly though, by
the Pakistani Army. To execute the operation, about 24 active Islamist
fundamentalist groups have been formed in Bangladesh, Nepal and India.
These groups have been trained on the pattern of the Lashkar-e-Toiba
and the Taliban militia.

These include groups such as
the Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Assam (MULTA), the Muslim United
Liberation Front of Assam (MULFA), the People’s Liberation Front (PLF),
the International Liberation Army (ILA), the Muslim Security Force (MSF),
the Liberation of Islamic Tiger Force (LITF), the Muslim Security Council
of Assam (MSCA), the United Liberation Militia of Assam (ULMA), the
Minority Peoples Action Committee (MPAC), the Muslim Volunteers Force
(MVF), the Mujahid Vahini and Jubo Command.

Approximately 5,000 Bangladeshi
youth have been trained by the ISI for executing a Kargil-type operation
again. Some youths among these have also been trained in guerrilla warfare.
The training was imparted by the Mujahid Vahini in the Bangladesh under
the patronage and instructions of the ISI. Training camps were organised
with support from Gajir Dargah Madrasa and Alima Madrasa. In addition,
camps were also organised in the Galamari area of Khulna district and
Bagchara and Salim Bila areas of Jessore district with support from
Bangladesh’s secret agency, the DGFI, and the Jamat-e-Islami Hind. To
oversee the entire operation, Pakistan had appointed retired Major Rustam
Ali in Bangladesh.

Indonesia

Laskar Jihad (LJ - Jihad Troopers
or the Militia of the Holy War), with its headquarters at Degolan, north
of Yogyakarta in Indonesia, has linkages with many Islamist terror outfits
and radical groups. Chief of LJ, Ustad Ja'far Umar Thalib, spent two
years of his early life fighting along with the Mujahideen against Soviet
forces in Afghanistan in 1988-89. Ja'far had joined the Mujahideen after
dropping out of the Mawdudi Institute in Lahore, Pakistan, from where
he acquired ‘knowledge’ in advanced Islamist studies. LJ is the military
wing of the Forum Komunikasi Ahlus Sunnah wal Jama'ah (Sunni Communication
Forum) or FKAWJ, an outfit formed by a group of fundamentalist Muslim
leaders in early 1998 to promote 'true Islamist values'. Laskar Jihad
was formally established on January 30, 2000 in Yogyakarta in response
to what FKAWJ perceived as the deliberate persecution of Muslims in
Maluku. Its total membership is now estimated to be approximately 10,000.
Its cadres receive training at a camp in Munjul village near Bogor-on-Java,
where the Laskar Jihad is based. It has links with many terrorist outfits
and Islamist fundamentalist organizations based in Saudi Arabia, Yemen
and Jordan. The LJ supports acts of terrorism against ‘strategic facilities’,
including the World Trade Center in New York. It has also developed
links with bin Laden's Al Qaeda global terrorist network
in the past two years. Not long ago, LJ Chief Ja'far said, bin Laden
had sent an emissary to the Moluccas to invite the LJ to join his terrorist
network. The outfit also has ties with the Malaysian Moujahedeen Group,
also known as the KMM Jihad, a terrorist outfit in neighbouring Malaysia.
LJ also maintains links with the Abu Sayyaf group. Of late, many Afghan
mercenaries have joined the LJ forces in the Moluccas. Some LJ ‘commanders’
have trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The cadres also comprise mercenaries
from countries like Yemen. There are also striking similarities between
LJ's Web site and those of Islamist outfits operating as far away as
in Chechnya. The LJ's strongest foreign link is with Muslim Moro terrorists
fighting the Philippine government. Ja'far has opined that the LJ opposes
the use of suicide bombers but believed that the September 11-attack
on US was justified because of what he perceived as Washington's ‘double
standard’ of protecting Jews in Israel while ignoring the interests
of Muslims around the world.

Money and weapons flow to the
Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) from Saudi Arabia, Libya, Sudan,
Pakistan, Iraq and Syria to Mindanao, with Malaysia acting as the middleman.

Both MNLF and MILF have strong
contacts with radical Muslim groups, particularly in the Middle East
and Malaysia. Some of their cadres have trained with the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO). Members of all Moro groups, among them Abdur Rajak
and Abubakar Jan Jalani (founder and the leader of Abu Sayyaf until
1998), participated in the Afghan war against the Russians. Contacts
once established have been maintained after the Russians left Afghanistan
and the brigade returned home. In this manner, connections were also
established with Osama bin Laden and with those responsible for the
World Trade Center bombing. Support also comes from countries that had
formerly supported the MNLF as well: Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Sudan, Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Kosovo

Certain cadres of the Kosovo
Liberation Army (Ushtria Clirimatare e Kosoves), which has financed
its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist
camps run by Osama bin Laden
in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina
and elsewhere. Laden's Al Qaeda has both trained and financially
supported the KLA. The KLA's is also involved in narcotic smuggling,
as a means of raising funds for weapons. The KLA is linked with an extensive
organized crime network in Albania, which smuggles heroin to prospective
clients in Western Europe and the United States. Narcotics is smuggled
over land and sea routes from Turkey through Bulgaria, Greece and Yugoslavia
to Western Europe and elsewhere in a circuit now referred to as the
‘Balkan Route’.

Middle East

Hizballah (Party of God)

The Lebanon-based Hizballah has
built a support network in Brazil, at the triborder area with neighboring
Argentina and Paraguay. In May 1999, Argentina’s Supreme Court, after
an official investigation, formally blamed Hizballah for the March 17,
1992 bombing of Israel's embassy in Buenos Aires. Hizballah also has
a terrorism infrastructure in Europe, Africa and North America. Hizballah
maintains an active link with the various terrorist groups in the Middle
East. In October 1997, it admitted to training Hamas terrorists in Lebanon.
Local chapters of the Hizballah consisting primarily of radical Shiite
Muslims, many of who are products of Iran’s theological seminaries,
have received terrorist training there, and in Lebanon, exist in Bahrain,
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Hizballah receives a substantial amount of
financial assistance, weapons, political and organisational support
from both Syria and Iran.

Hamas

Hamas receives funding from Iran,
from wealthy Muslim citizens in the Persian Gulf countries and, in recent
times, from many wealthy Muslim citizens of the United States and Western
Europe. In recent times, Hamas has also developed linkages with the
transnational network of Islamist terror, of which the Osama bin Laden’s
group Al Qaeda is the nodal point. Hamas is reported to have developed
extensive fundraising and political networks in the United States, working
primarily through religious and research institutions as also investment
companies.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad
(PIJ)

PIJ possesses a close linkage
with Iran and also derives most of its funding from state sponsors,
especially Iran. It has its headquarters in Syria and receives some
logistical support from that country.

The Islamic Group and Al-Jihad

Iran, Sudan and Islamist terrorist
outfits in Afghanistan (allied to bin Laden) provide financial and logistical
support to the two Egypt-based groups. In recent times, the top leadership
of the Islamic Group and Al-Jihad has also become part of Laden’s Al
Qaeda.

The Armed Islamic Group (GIA)

Certain GIA cadres in exile have
now joined the Al Qaeda network of bin Laden. The organization receives
financial and logistical aid from Algerian expatriates, many of who
reside in Western Europe and Canada. Algerian security forces had arrested
many Sudanese and Pakistanis from a mosque in the Algiers suburb of
Harrach in June 1991 during the anti-government riots.

Popular Front For The Liberation
Of Palestine (PFLP)

It receives logistical assistance
from and has safe havens in Syria. The PFLP is based in Damascus and
it has training facilities in the Syrian-controlled areas of Lebanon.

Democratic Front For The Liberation
Of Palestine (DFLP)

The DFLP receives some financial
assistance from Syria, where it has its headquarters.

Myanmar

Many terror groups, particularly
the Kachin Independent Organisation and its military wing, the Kachin
Independent Army, have links with several South Asian terrorist/insurgent
outfits for training and procurement of arms. In addition, the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen
(HM)
and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM)
have trained the Myanmar Muslims on the Bangladesh border.

Narcotics

Heroin from the Golden Crescent
and Golden Triangle feeds South Asia, which is a region abundant in
major transit routes to the West. Approximately 80 per cent of the heroin
stocks found in the US originate from Myanmar, a state sharing a common
border with India. Furthermore, narcotic trafficking is a significant
source of revenue for South Asian terrorist outfits with trans-state
reach. Afghanistan produces three times more opium than the rest of
the world put together. 90 per cent of it is cultivated in Taliban controlled
areas, thus making the Taliban the largest heroin producer in the world.
The regime also collects a 20 per cent tax from opium dealers and transporters—money
that goes into the Taliban’s war chest. Whereas Afghan opium was exported
to the West through Pakistan in the 1980s, there are now multiple export
routes through Iran, the Persian Gulf states and Central Asia. As these
routes expand, so do the beneficiaries. With most of his bank accounts
frozen, bin Laden currently finances his operations primarily through
dealing in opium. Drug smuggling from Afghanistan also finances the
Uighur terrorists in China. There is also a direct drug-smuggling link
between Afghanistan and the Ferghana Valley, where the Islamic Movement
of Uzbekistan (IMU) is based. The civil war in Tajikistan was partly
financed by Afghan drugs.

There has been a consistent growth
of Islamist activity in the Terai area (Muslim pockets in the Terai
are located in Bardiya, Banke, Rupendehi and a belt stretching from
Parsa to Morang. Besides Muslims of Indian origin, a fair number of
Hill Muslims is based at Gorkha and Syanja). It has primarily been in
the shape of construction of mosques and madrassas (religious schools)
which are aimed at ‘enhancing’ Islamist awareness amongst the Nepalese
Muslim population. Pakistan, with active financial support from Saudi
Arabia and some Pan-Islamist organizations, has been closely involved
in increasing the number of mosques/madrassas in Nepal. In the last
20 years, approximately 275 mosques and madrassas have emerged in the
districts of Rupandehi, Banke, Kapilvastu and Bardiya (bordering the
Uttar Pradesh State of Northern India) of which 50 mosques and madrassas
were constructed during 1991-95, primarily with financial help from
Saudi Arabia.

Certain Jammu
and Kashmir terrorist outfits have found safe havens in Nepal for
their clandestine meetings and subversive activities. A prominent trans-border
criminal nexus had operated under the guidance of the late Mirza Dilshad
Beg, who maintained active links with the Pakistani Embassy at Kathmandu.

Various Nepal- based Muslims
organisations have begun to receive more funds from Pakistan and other
Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia as also pan-Islamist organisations.
Furthermore, the Muslim Jan Kalyan Samiti is engaged in converting poor
Hindus to Islam by giving them financial inducements. The Nepal Islamic
Yuva Sangh (NIYS) plays an increasingly significant role along the Indo-Nepal
border. Some of the significant Islamist groups that are under Pakistani
influence are as follows:

Jamaat-e-Millet-e-Islamia,
is closely affiliated to the JeI (Pakistan). Many Pakistani diplomats
stationed in Kathmandu hold regular meetings with senior leaders
of this group. Furthermore, a significant portion of financial assistance
from abroad, particularly form Saudi Arabia, is routed through Pakistani
intermediaries.

Nepal Islamic Yuva Sangh (NIYS).
Also known as "Nepal Muslim Yuva Samiti", this is a front outfit
of the JMI and has direct links with Pakistan’s ISI. It is active
in the Terai belt along the Indo-Nepal border. NIYS leaders have
established regular contacts with fundamentalist outfits in several
countries, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and certain
South East Asian nations. It also sponsors Muslim youth for ‘training’
abroad.

Nepal Muslim League (NML),
established in 1993 by pro-Pakistani elements in Nepal and led by
Salim Khan and Zia-ul-Haq (founder of the "Tanzeem-e-Islah-e-Muasra").
Among its more prominent activities is the construction and renovation
of mosques and madrassas;

Nepal Muslim Ekta Sangh (NMES)
is an umbrella organisation, which aims to unite the various Muslim
outfits operating in Nepal. It has received support for its objectives
from several countries, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Malaysia,
Turkey, Kuwait, Iran and Tajikistan.

Democratic Muslim Welfare Association
(DMWA), another organization formed during the reign of
Zia-ul Haq, is known to have sent in 1994 a ‘fact-finding mission’
to Assam and Ayodhya to ascertain the perception of the Muslim populace
in these areas.

Pakistan’s former Premier Benazir
Bhutto, during a visit in 1994 to Nepal, donated Rs. 10 lakhs in Nepalese
currency (NC) from the Prime Minister’s Fund for Development of the
Narayanghat mosque, Rauhat mosque, Nepalganj Jama Masjid, Kathmandu
Kuleswore Masjid, Janakpur madrassa and Sunsari madrassa. The Pakistani
Embassy in Kathmandu in the same year donated Rs. 75,000 and Rs. 1.47
lakhs (NC), for the construction of Madrassa Islamia School, Kathmandu,
and a madrassa in Mahottari respectively. Towards end to 1995, one Mohammed
Parvez, brother of the former Anchaladhish of Biratnagar, received a
sum of Rs. 14 crore (NC) from Pakistan through the Rashtriya Vanijya
Bank (RVB), for the purchase of land in areas adjacent to the Indo-Nepal
border for construction of mosques and madrassas.

Osama Bin Laden

While residing in Sudan, Osama Bin Laden financed and assisted
in setting up at least three terrorist training camps in cooperation
with the National Islamic Front of Hassan al-Turabi, and his construction
company is reported to have worked directly with certain Sudanese military
officials to transport and supply terrorists to such camps. He is also
reported to have evinced keen interest at one time in acquiring nuclear
and chemical weapons. Laden has been provided shelter by the Taliban
regime in Afghanistan for several years and the Taliban have refused
repeated US and United Nations requests for his extradition. Bin Laden
is reported to be operating several terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, where Islamist terrorists
prepare for Jehad in places like Central Asia, Jammu
and Kashmir, West Asia as also southeast Asia. Osama bin Laden maintains
extensive links with a number of international terror outfits in Egypt,
India, the Philippines and elsewhere. These outfits enjoy the use of
bin Laden's funding network and training camps.

Laden’s Al Qaeda serves as a focal point
or as an umbrella outfit for a global network that includes terrorist
cells in various countries. It has evolved considerably to have now
emerged as a primary umbrella outfit, which funds and carries out Islamist
terrorist activity worldwide. The Al Qaeda has a global reach with presence
in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Turkey, Jordan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan,
Syria, Xinjiang in China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia,
Mindanao in the Philippines, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain,
Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Dagestan, Jammu
and Kashmir, Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Azerbaijan, Eritrea,
Uganda, Ethiopia, as also in parts of the West Bank and Gaza. The dispersed
nature of Al Qaeda cadre around the globe provides Osama bin Laden the
command over a global terror network and to carry out lethal terrorist
attacks across the world. Al Qaeda has forged alliances with like-minded
fundamentalist groups such as Egypt's Al Jihad, Iran's Hezbollah, Sudan's
National Islamic Front, as also terrorist outfits in Yemen, Saudi Arabia,
and Somalia. Al Qaida also has ties to the "Islamic Group," led at one
time by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian cleric serving a life
sentence since his 1995 conviction for a thwarted attempt to blow up
various New York landmarks. Two of Sheik Rahman's sons joined forces
with bin Laden in the late 1990s.

Osama bin Laden reportedly utilizes
an estimated $300 million in financial assets to fund his Al-Qaida network
consisting of approximately 3,000 Islamist terrorists. Among the various
commercial undertakings that are owned and managed by his associates
and front organizations include ostrich raising in Kenya, forestry interests
in Turkey, diamond trading in Africa, bridge construction in Sudan as
also agricultural holdings in Tajikistan. Another source of funding
is the millions of dollars in the form of donations from wealthy Muslim
individuals. Osama is also reported to have succeeded in persuading
the Muslim clergy in various Arab countries to issue a religious edict
that would render it legal for Muslims to offer their Zakat (alms)
given annually to the poor and to the erstwhile Arab militia who fought
the Afghan war. According to news reports, various Saudi Arabia-based
individuals were allegedly donating $1 million to $2 million a month
through mosques and other fund-raising avenues to assist bin Laden.
Media reports have also indicated that various mosques, Islamist charities
and other non-governmental organizations have diverted money raised
in the United States, Europe and other parts of the world to the Al-Qaida.
In addition to these investments, bin Laden had also inherited a huge
fortune from his father, a construction business magnate in Saudi Arabia.
The dispersed transnational financial activity of bin Laden's Al Qaida
is essentially aimed at providing him with a way to transfer and receive
large sums of money around the globe as also avoid detection by nations
and law enforcing authorities seeking to arrest him and destroy his
vast terror network. Media reports citing accounts of witnesses during
the trail of suspects charged in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies
in Africa, Osama bin Laden’s commercial undertakings manufacture goods
that reportedly are carried through other countries, including Cyprus,
to evade international sanctions against Sudan as also to secure more
profits through sale in Europe and America.

The earliest version of an Islamist
terrorist coalition led by Osama bin Laden was the International Islamic
Front, a loose coalition founded in Saudi Arabia in August 1990, which
included Egypt's Jihad and Jamaa Islamiya armed outfits, Jordan's Mohammad's
Army, Jammu and Kashmir's Ansar Movement and several other factions,
including the AI-Muhajirun. On February 22, 1998, Osama bin Laden issued
an fatwa (edict) calling for attacks on all Americans, including civilians,
and announced the creation of the International Islamic Front for Jihad
Against the Jews and Crusaders, in association with extremist groups
from Egypt, Pakistan and
Bangladesh.

The organizations whose membership
in the International Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders
was announced are the

Egyptian Jihad Group (Jamaat-ul-Jihad),

Egyptian Armed Islamic Group (Gama'a al-Islamiya),

Pakistan Scholars/Ulema Society (Jamaat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan),

Partisans Movement in Kashmir (Harkat-ul-Mujahideen),

Jihad Movement in Bangladesh,

Afghan military wing of the "Advice and
Reform" commission led by Osama bin Laden.

Signatories to the February statement,
other than Osama bin Laden, were Ayman al-Zawahri, leader of Egypt's
Jihad group, Rifai Taha, head of Egypt's Gama'a al-Islamiya, Mir Hamza,
secretary general of Pakistan's Ulema Society, Fazlul Rahman Khalil,
Chief of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM)
in Pakistan, and Abdel Salam Mohammed, head of the Jihad Movement in
Bangladesh.

Pakistan

Islamic terrorist
outfits active in Jammu and Kashmir, Central Asian Republics, Chechnya,
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Xinjiang province of China, as also in Southern
Philippines, are linked to the terrorist outfits based in Pakistan and
Afghanistan.

The Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM),
a member of Osama bin Laden’s
International Islamic Front for
Jihad against the United States and Israel, maintains several training
camps in Pakistan, Pakistan controlled Kashmir (PcK)
and Afghanistan, where several
thousand terrorists are given military and religious training. The HuM
primarily consists of Pakistani, Afghan and Arab mercenaries. Laden’s
training infrastructure in Afghanistan consists of training camps of
the HuM also. The HuM maintains close links with the Tablighi Jamaat
(TJ) of Pakistan in supporting Islamic terrorist movements in different
countries, including amongst members of the Muslim community in the
United States. During the Afghan war in the 1980s, the HUM is estimated
to have recruited approximately 5,000 terrorists and sent them into
Afghanistan in support of the Mujahideen. The finances for such terrorist
operations is traced to Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia Subsequently,
the HUM also recruited ‘volunteers’ from Muslim communities in other
countries too. Approximately 6,000 ‘volunteers’ were recruited from
Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Jammu & Kashmir,
Bangladesh, Myanmar and the Philippines. It had its own training camps
in Afghan territory near Miran Shah in the North West Frontier Province
(NWFP).

Consequent to the Taliban gaining
control over most of Afghanistan, the HUM converted itself into an international
network of terrorists and spread its activities to Jammu & Kashmir
in India, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Bosnia, Chechnya, Tajikistan, Myanmar
and the Philippines. It is also active in Myanmar and trains local Muslims
in Arakans in weapons handling and guerilla warfare. In Tajikistan,
HuM terrorists have served with and trained the Tajik resistance elements.
The HuM terrorists have also fought in Bosnia since 1992.

The Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT)
is the largest terrorist outfit based in Pakistan with 80 per cent of
its cadre being Pakistani nationals. The LeT has also been part of the
Bosnian campaign against the Serbs. Osama bin Laden is one of the primary
financiers of the Lashkar. The Markaz campus at Muridke in Lahore, its
headquarters, was used as a hide-out for Ramzi Yousef and Mir Aimal
Kansi, who was convicted and sentenced to death for murdering two CIA
officers outside the CIA’s headquarters in Washington in January 1993.

Pan-Islamic Organisations
in Pakistan

A majority of the Islamist groups
and outfits have established external linkages, primarily financial,
on the pretext of sustaining religious activities. The Ikhwan-ul-Musalmeen
possesses links with the Jamaat-e-Islami. During the Gulf War, Iraqi
funds supported the pamphleteering and pro-Saddam demonstrations all
over Pakistan. Iran has been assisting the Imamia Students Organization
through cultural centres in Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi. It also
has considerable levels of influence and sponsors the Tehreek-e-Nifaz
Fiqh Jafferia (TNFJ).

Saudi Arabia has bank rolled
groups like the Jamaat-e-Ahl-e-Hadis, Jamaat-e-Mashaikh and some factions
of the JUI-Darkhawasti (Samiul Haq) as also the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI).
Foreign visits by various leaders of Islamist parties from Pakistan
to Islamic countries in the Middle East have been constantly encouraged.
Regular exchanges of visits also take place between Islamist scholars,
especially from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran, to OIC-sponsored institutes
of Islamist learning set up in Pakistan.

Pakistan had also provided extensive
ideological succour as also military training to many Arab mercenaries
during the Afghan War. Training camps and facilities have emerged between
Pakistan’s tribal areas and the Afghan territory. Foreign mercenaries,
as also Arab fundamentalist groups up to 500 individuals at a time,
undergo training in arms at these camps. These camps reportedly produce
not only terrorists, but also terror instructors, for their own respective
countries.

In Peshawar, officers have been
designated for coordinating the activities of external Islamist fundamentalist
groups operating in Pakistan. The Al-Jihad office was established in
1984 under Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri; Talat Qaseem leads another, the Islamist
Group office. It is from Peshawar that the Al Gama’a issued a warning
through a fax message on March 5, 1993 to the USA against the latter’s
alleged attempts to ‘implicate’ Rahman in the bombing of the World Trade
Centre in New York. The message, sent to the office of Reuters in Cairo,
also warned foreign investors to quit Egypt ‘as early as possible’.
Talat Qaseem, after serving a 7-year sentence for his involvement in
President Anwar Sadat’s assassination, arrived in Pakistan and took
refuge there in early 1990. Mir Aimal Kansi, the Pakistani wanted in
the US for killing two CIA officers in that country on January 25, 1993
also took refuge in Pakistan.

A large number of NGOs began
functioning from Peshawar during the Afghan war to ‘assist’ Afghan refugees.
Arab mercenaries from countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya
came to work in this programme. Links were also established between
the Ikhwan-ul-Musalmeen, the Afghan Mujahideen and the Jamaat-e-Islami.
Camps run by the Hizb-e-Islami (Gulbuddin Heikmatyar) inside Afghan
territory during the Afghan war were used to train terrorists in the
early phase of terrorism in J&K. Two fundamentalist leaders from
Egypt - Ayman El Zawahari and Talat Qaseem, both wanted in connection
with political killings there, continue to remain in exile in Pakistan
and are running training centres for Islamist terrorists in Peshawar.
They are linked to the Egyptian Al Jihad movement. The Tunisian fundamentalist
leader, Rachid Ghannouchi of the An Nahda movement, visited Peshawar
and other areas bordering Afghanistan in November 1991.

Sudanese Islamist fundamentalists
in Pakistan are being utilized to train inside Pakistan the Jamaat-e-Islami’s
cadres, as well as foreign mercenaries. They first arrive in Lahore
and undergo a first stage of training in Islamist ideology before proceeding
to Peshawar for militray training. Pakistan has also assisted in the
formation of the Islamic Jihad Movement led by Abboud Zomur in Egypt.
A number of accused in the Al Mahgoub (Egypt's former Parliamentary
Speaker) assassination case had reportedly obtained military training
in Peshawar. Another terrorist, Magdi Safti, returned from Peshawar
to plan the assassination of Hassan Abu Pasha (Chief Editor, Al Mussawar).
A Pakistani national, Mohammed Ashiq Chaudari was arrested in Cairo
in February 1993 for selling audiocassettes containing extremist religious
propaganda. Pakistani terrorist instructors have also been at training
camps in Sudan that were established by Osama bin Laden during his stay
in that country. Talks were also held in 1991 between Zawahiri Qaseem,
representatives of terrorist outfits from Syria, Algeria and Libya and
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, currently one of the leaders of Northern Alliance
opposing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, to set up an international
Jehad organisation.

Pakistan had disclosed in April
1993 that 6,170 Arab Mujahideen were registered for stay in Pakistan.
The breakup was as follows:

Egypt

1142

Morocco

102

Saudi Arabia

981

Qatar

92

Yemen

946

Jordan

77

Algeria

792

Palestine

70

Iraq

326

Kuwait

60

Syria

292

Bahrain

35

Sudan

234

Omam

11

Tunisia

117

The Markaz-ud-Dawah-al-Irshad
(MDI) with its headquarters in Muridke, Lahore, has been supported extensively
with funding from many Islamist countries and preferential land allotment
for its huge premises from the provincial government in Pakistan Punjab.
It runs ideologically virulent training programmes for terrorists and
has also provided military training programmes. As part of the programme,
trainees are sent to the Afghan camps of Osama bin Laden. Its annual
congregations have been patronized by many Federal Government Cabinet
Ministers. Students from India, belonging to the Islamic Sevak Sangh,
have visited Pakistan in collaboration with the ISI to certain training
centres there.

Philippines

Training was provided to approximately
700 Indonesian militants in Mindanao, an Island in southern Philippines,
by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Abu Sayyaf group
in the late 1990s. International terrorists have had long established
links with Filipino rebels. Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law, Saudi
businessman Mohamed Jamal Khalifa, financed a number of non-governmental
organizations in Mindanao that are suspected of being used to channelise
finances to rebel groups. Khalifa fled the country in 1996. Ramzi Yousef,
jailed Pakistani mastermind of a 1993-attempt to blow up the World Trade
Centre, has been linked to the Abu Sayyaf group vis-à-vis preparations
for an aborted 1995-attempt to blow up 12 American airliners. In 1995,
the Philippine police raided a Manila apartment that had been rented
by Ramzi Yousef, an associate of bin Laden. Yousef was later convicted
for the 1993-World Trade Center bombing incident. He apparently used
the Manila flat as headquarters to orchestrate terrorist attacks in
Asia, including a plan to blow up two planes over Hong Kong. Moreover,
security forces have killed several Middle Eastern and Pakistani terrorist
trainers and demolition experts when they ascertained the main MILF
base on Mindanao in year 2000. There are critical links between Afghanistan
and Muslims in southern Philippines, with Pakistan acting as the intermediary.
In addition, strong links also emerge on account of the fact that many
Muslim youths from the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia
were sent to Afghanistan between 1979 and 1992 for training and to participate
in Afghan Mujahadeen combat operations.

Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF)'s shadowy leader Salamat Hashim has been in exile for more than
two decades in the Middle East. He has, thus, been able to establish
strong links with terror outfits in that region and more importantly
secure ideological support structure to increase the cadre strength
of the MILF.

Abu Sayyaf, ("father of the sword"),
founded in 1986 by an Afghan professor named Abdul Rasul Abu Sayyaf,
has been operating since the 1980s from Egypt and the Philippines to
Algeria and New York. Abu Sayyaf had also established a ‘university’,
north of Peshawar in Pakistan, to train terrorists. There he is reported
to have trained terrorists for the Philippines, the Middle East, North
Africa and New York.

Saudi Arabia

The most significant organisations
supported by Saudi Arabia and propagating Pan-Islamism are the Rabita
al-Alam al-Islami – World Muslim League (MWL) and the World Assembly
of Muslim Youth (WAMY). Other such organisations, which also coordinate
their activity with the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), are
the Supreme Council of Mosques; the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) and
the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA).

The only organized opposition
to the Saudi regime emerges from the London-based Committee for the
Defence of Legitimate Rights (CDLR) led by Dr. Mohammed Masaari. The
CDLR and its allies, including the Al-Mujahiroun led by Omar Bakri Mohammed,
a Saudi-Afghan Mujahideen of Osama bin Laden’s outfit, and certain Islamist
fundamentalist outfit, have succeeded in making coordinated efforts
against the Saudi regime. In this context, they have been able to smuggle
a considerable quantity of propaganda material, including audio and
video tapes, inside Saudi Arabia in 1996-98.

Activists of the recently proscribed
Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI)
in Saudi Arabia are reported to be involved in the collection of funds
and are also canvassing for the unity of the Islamic Ummah. A significant
portion of these funds are collected during visits of the SIMI leadership
to Saudi Arabia in connection with Haj and Umrah and subsequently remitted
to India through hawala (illegal) channels. Certain SIMI activists in
Jeddah are alleged to have established contacts with the erstwhile Afghan
Mujahideen for securing assistance in imparting military training to
their cadres. Attempts have also been made to recruit volunteers from
amongst the Indian Muslim expatriate population originally hailing from
the southern Indian State of Kerala.

A new organisation, Tanzeem-e-Muslim
Musawara (TMM), has been launched recently in several countries including
in Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, under the patronage of the
Mecca-based Muslim World League (MWL). The stated objectives of the
TMM are the enhancing of Muslim activities as also education of masses
regarding their religious "duties". In this context, a meeting of TMM
activists hailing from Pakistan, India and Nepal was held in Dhaka,
Bangladesh in January 1998 under the chairmanship of Sheikh Alhad Iftal
Hussain, Chief of the Bangladesh unit of the TMM.

Spain

Police in Madrid on September
25 arrested six Algerians allegedly linked to Osama bin Laden and to
the Al Qaeda, suspected for planning terrorist attacks on US targets
in Europe. The arrested are reported to belong to a dissident faction
of the Armed Islamic Group, Algeria's most hard-line terrorist outfit.

Sudan

Prominent Palestinian and Lebanese
terrorist outfits groups have established Sudan as a base. These groups
include the Abu Nidal Organisation, the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine--General Command, headed by Ahmed Jibril, the Iranian-backed
Islamist Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine; and the Lebanese Shiite
group, Hezbollah. During his stay in Sudan, Osama bin Laden with the
assistance of National Islamic Front (NIF) leader Hassan al-Turabi,
and in concert with various NIF leaders, built a network of businesses,
including an Islamic bank, an import-export firm, as also firms that
exported agricultural products. Laden financed and assisted in setting
up at least three terrorist training camps in cooperation with the NIF,
and his construction company is reported to have worked directly with
certain Sudanese military officials to transport and supply terrorists
to such camps.

The business enterprises in Sudan,
some of which are reported to be still operational, enabled him to offer
safe haven as also employment in Sudan to Al Qaeda cadres promoting their
involvement in radical Islamist movements in their countries of origin
(especially Egypt) as well as in anti-US terrorist activities. He is
reported to have paid $50 million for a part ownership of a bank in
Khartoum. Reportedly, he ran Taba Investment Co., which invested in
global stock markets. Laden also formed commercial ventures with members
of Sudan's ruling NIF. Sudan has also provided sanctuaries for allies
of bin Laden in outfits and groups such as the Islamist Jihad and Gamaa
Islamiya from Egypt as well as Hamas and Palestinian Islamist Jihad.
Hassan al-Turabi, who heads the NIF or the Popular Arab Islamic Conference,
is a long-time member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Various regional Islamist opposition
and insurgent groups in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda and Tunisia have reportedly
been provided sanctuaries in Sudan. In 1995, three suspected cadres
of the Egyptian terror outfit Gamaa Islamiya made an attempt to assassinate
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia. Sudan has provided safe
haven to the three suspects and has refused to extradite them to Ethiopia.
Consequently, the United Nations imposed diplomatic sanctions on Sudan
in 1996 for its failure to turn over the fugitives and also for general
Sudanese support of international terrorism.

Taliban

Taliban has developed extensive linkages
with terrorist outfits and fundamentalist organisations operating in
different countries. The emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan has
offered terrorists from Jammu
and Kashmir, Iran, Central Asian Republics and China’s predominantly
Muslim Xinjiang province sanctuary, training camps and financial support.
Terrorists in Chechnya include in their ranks Arabs, Afghans and Pakistanis,
most of who had fought in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation.
The Uzbek and Tajik terrorists who took over parts of southern Kyrgyzstan
in August 1999 also had similar Afghan connections. The Taliban is widely
held to be a creature of Pakistan. It emerged in the year 1993-94 during
Benazir Bhutto’s tenure as Prime Minister. The idea was a brainwave
of Maj. Gen. (retd) Nasirullah Babar, the then Interior Minister, Gen.
Pervez Musharraf, who was then Director-General of Military Operations
(DGMO), and Lt. Gen. Mohammad Aziz, who was then the Deputy Director-General
of the ISI and in charge of the ISI's operations in India and Afghanistan.

The Jamaat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam (JuI),
a Pakistani Deobandi party has set up hundreds of madrassas in Pakistan's
Pushtun belt, offering Afghan refugees and young Pakistanis free education,
food, shelter and military training. These madrassas became the main
recruiters of Pakistani and foreign students to fight in Afghanistan.
The camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan where they trained became sanctuaries
for the promotion of a pan-Islamic radical agenda in Algeria, Egypt,
Yemen, Sudan, Jordan, the Philippines and Bangladesh. Between 1994 and
1999, an estimated 80,000 to 1,00,000 terrorists were trained in these
madrassas and they had fought in Afghanistan.

With their porous borders, the
five former Soviet Central Asian republics - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan - have been affected by the
growth of the Taliban regime. The threat includes spread of Islamist
fundamentalism as also a massive flow of narcotics and small arms. In
early 1999, Tahir Yuldashev, leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
(IMU), fled to Afghanistan where the Taliban allowed him to set up a
training camp. Yuldashev is one of the masterminds behind an assassination
attempt on Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov in February 1999. He is
currently training many Islamist terrorists from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan,
Kyrgyzstan as well as the Uighur Muslims from Xinjiang province in China.
In August 1999, Juma Namangani, another IMU leader, entered southern
Kyrgyzstan with some 800 terrorists and attempted to invade Uzbekistan.
The Taliban offers the IMU sanctuary from Karimov’s crackdown, weapons
and also the means to finance themselves through the narcotics trade.

The Taliban also provides sanctuary
to various Iranian dissidents. They have given sanctuary to the Ahl-e-Sunnah
Wal Jamaat, which is made up of Sunni Iranians opposed to Tehran. And
leaders of the principal Iranian opposition group, the Iraq-based Mujahideen-e-Khalq,
frequently visit Kandahar and have also asked the Taliban for an operational
base.

Afghan heroin has been flooding
the Xinjiang province in China. The heroin is helping to fund Islamist
and nationalist opposition to the state among the Uighurs and other
Muslim ethnic groups. Uighur terrorists have also trained and fought
with the Afghan Mujahideen since 1986 and arms and explosives used by
the rebels against Chinese security forces are traced to Afghanistan.
Some Uighur terrorists are involved with Yuldashev as also with bin
Laden if not the Taliban itself.

Thailand

International terrorists have
been taking advantage of Bangkok's lax tourism-promoting immigration
procedures. Islamist terrorists were linked to a failed truck-bomb attack
against the Israeli embassy in 1994 there. Links with Middle Eastern
terrorist outfits were ascertained when Ibrahim Ghosheh, leader of the
Palestinian terrorist outfit Hamas, was deported in June 2000. A small
number of terrorist operatives belonging to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda do live in Thailand.

There has been a revival of Islamist
terrorism in four Muslim-dominated southern provinces of Thailand in
the recent months. The Bersatu ("United" Malay) group was responsible
for a bomb attack on the Hat Yai railway station as also a hotel in
the Yala province in April 2001 and, more recently, has also indulged
in abduction and extortion. Terrorist outfits, as also some of the countries
in the Middle East, provide training, education, ideological succour
and financial support for various Islamist fundamentalist groups in
the southern provinces of Thailand.

United States of America

Many Islamist terrorist outfits
are reported to have established more than 30 front organisations primarily
in the form of religious entities, free from governmental control. Furthermore,
donations to these organisations are tax deductible and large sums of
such monies support the terror networks. Terrorist outfits like the
Hezbollah, Palestine Islamist Jihad, Hamas and others are reportedly
operating surreptitiously within US borders from New York to San Diego.
Many such outfits collect US dollars to send to their terror cells overseas.
They have also utilised US addresses to buy equipment, US Internet sites
to communicate as also US universities and foundations to meet and plan
their operations. To carry out terrorist attacks in the United States
and elsewhere, Islamist terrorists reportedly utilise the US banking
system and telecommunications as also take advantage of the freedom
of assembly. In January 1995, the US administration froze $800,000 held
in accounts allegedly controlled by terrorist outfits. Virginia-based
businessman Mousier Abu Marzook, who was deported to Jordan in May 1997,
has been accused of financing many Hamas terrorist cells. According
to media reports, millions of dollars had passed through Marzook's accounts.
Fraudulent commercial deals by many World Trade Center bombing suspects,
the Abu Nidal group and others had allegedly sent approximately $100
million to finance Middle Eastern Islamist terror cells. Narcotics trafficking
in the US has partly financed many Islamist terror outfits as also radical
groups. Many Islamist foundations are alleged to have transferred money
to Middle Eastern terrorist groups. Furthermore, information with regard
to building weapons of mass destruction - nuclear, chemical and biological
- is consistently being routed through the Internet. The group responsible
for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing included Islamist radicals from
Palestine, Sudan and Egypt as well as U.S. converts. US-based Hamas
activists arrested in Israel are reported to have indicated that they
had attempted to attack prominent Jews living in Chicago.

Ali Mohammed, 48, an ex-US Army
Sergeant of Egyptian origin pleaded guilty before a US District Judge
in October 2000 to a charge of plotting with Osama bin Laden to kill
Americans anywhere in the world. He also admitted that he had helped
in secretly moving bin Laden from Pakistan to Sudan and trained members
of his Al Qaeda outfit. Pakistan and Afghanistan-based Islamist terrorists
have recruited members from the Muslim communities in North America
as also the Caribbean Islands to utilise them for terrorist operations
against US interests in West Asia and also for promoting Jehad
in the US. Ramzi Ahmed Yousef of Pakistani origin and other US-based
Muslim mercenaries of bin Laden were responsible for the explosion inside
the World Trade Centre in February 1993. The Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM)
and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) are members of Osama bin Laden's International
Islamic Front for Jihad Against the US and Israel.

Jamaat ul-Fuqra (JuF),
a terrorist outfit operating in Pakistan and North America, was formed
by a Pakistani cleric, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, in the early 1980s.
JF in its early phase sought to counter what is perceived as excessive
Western influence on Islam It also concluded that violence was a significant
aspect in its quest to purify Islam. JF is loosely structured with certain
elements working openly through social service organisations to recruit
members, raise money, organise activities and distribute propaganda.
In the 1980s, they carried out various terrorist activities, including
murders and fire-bombings, across the United States. Although Gilani,
the chief of Fuqra resides in Pakistan, most of his group’s cells are
located in North America. Fuqra members have purchased isolated rural
properties in North America to live communally, practice their faith
and insulate themselves from Western culture. A large segment of its
members have been convicted of criminal acts, including murder and fraud.
The Jamaat Ul-Fuqra supports various terrorist outfits operating in
Pakistan and Kashmir. It has also converted a large number of Afro-Americans
to Islam and brought some of them to Pakistan for training in the use
of firearms and explosives. Although dormant in terms of real activity,
it has an active link with terrorist groups in Pakistan and provides
both moral and material assistance to these groups.

Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) of Pakistan,
headed by Lt. Gen. (retd) Javed Nasir, former Director-General of the
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s external intelligence
agency, and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM)
have supported Islamist extremist movements in different countries,
including amongst members of the Muslim community in the US. HuM terrorists
have been active in Bosnia, Chechnya, Tajikistan, Burma, Philippines
and Jammu and Kashmir. HuM terrorists maintain strong links with terrorist
outfits based in countries like Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Jordan primarily
following their mutual association during the Afghan war. Among the
foreign terrorists trained by the HuM at its training camps in Pakistan,
Pakistan controlled Kashmir (PcK)
and Afghanistan were 16 African-American
Muslims from various cities of the US. Funds for these activities were
traced to Muslim businessmen of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the
UK. TJ had/has many offices in the US, Russia, the Central Asian Republics,
South Africa, Australia and France. Amongst the organisations/outfits
in the US with which the TJ is linked are the Islamic Society of North
America (ISNA) and the Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA). A past
president of ISNA is Sheikh Abdullah Idris Ali, an American immigrant
of Sudanese origin, who also functioned as the Pesh Imam (chief priest)
and Khatib of a mosque in New York. The annual convention of the ISNA
held at Columbus, Ohio, from September 11,1995, was addressed amongst
others, by Hamza Yusuf, an American citizen of Greek origin, who, consequent
to embracing Islam, had lived for six years in Mauritania to study Islam
and also work as a TJ preacher; Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens,
a famous pop singer, who embraced Islam after coming into contact with
the TJ in Pakistan; Dr. Saghir of Algeria; and Dr. Israr Ahmed, the
Amir of the Tanzeem Islami of Pakistan and a worker of the TJ. The convention
observed that the ISNA had a US $ 100 million budget for spreading Islamic
education in the US primarily through the publication of text-books,
setting-up of week-end Islamic schools and also a weekly TV programme
called "Onsight". Amongst the suspected members of the TJ in the Muslim
community in the US is Louis Fara Khan, the Afro-American Muslim leader.
The TJ operates in the US and the Caribbean islands directly through
its own preachers deputed from Pakistan and also recruited from among
the Pakistani immigrant community in the US, besides through front outfits
such as the Jamaat-ul-Fuqra. The HuM, which works in close association
with the TJ, has been training Afro-American Muslims from the US in
its terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

On December 28, 1998, following
a call issued by Osama bin Laden to attack US and British targets consequent
to US-UK aerial strikes on Iraq, an Islamist outfit called the Aden-Abyan
Islamic Army supporting bin Laden’s anti-U.S. threats abducted 16 Western
tourists, including two Americans. The southern province of Abyan had
emerged as a base for the activities of Yemeni mercenaries belonging
to a group called the Jaish-e-Mohammed (Mohammed's Army), which had
been trained by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan. A
Yemeni associate of bin Laden, Tariq al-Fadhli, has/had established
several terrorist training camps in Southern Yemen and some of mercenaries
from these camps had bombed two hotels in Yemen, in 1992, where U.S.
troops proceeding to Somalia were staying. Prior to 1998, Yemeni members
of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) used to operate under the name of Islamist
Jihad. The Aden-Abyan Islamic Army was suspected to be an offshoot of
the Yemeni Islamic Jihad. The Islamic Jihad group of Yemen was formed
during the pre-unification era when Aden was the capital of the pro-Soviet
Socialist Republic of South Yemen to oppose the secular policies of
the Communist regime in the South. On December 24, 1998, the Yemeni
authorities had arrested five British nationals (all Muslims) and a
Franco-Algerian on charges of planning a series of bombings in Aden
during the Christmas-New Year's holiday. They were recruited, trained
and armed by al-Mehdar in a plot to attack the British Consulate, the
Christchurch Anglican Church as also two hotels used by Western tourists,
in retaliation for the US-UK air strikes on Iraq. In January 1999, three
Britons (all Muslims) and a Franco-Algerian were captured at a terrorist
training camp in Shabwa, 240 miles northeast of Aden. These terrorists
were recruited in Britain in July 1998 by a London-based Mullah called
Abu Hamza al-Masri, an Afghanistan war veteran, who was also the leader
of an Islamist outfit in London called the Supporters of Sharia (SOS).

In March 1991, Iran dispatched
several terrorist squads to Canada for operations in the U.S., both
independently and in support of local networks. One of these hit teams
would assassinate Mrs. Rafizadeh, the wife of a senior intelligence
official of the Shah's regime, in New Jersey on March 26, 1992. A milestone
in the emergence of Islamist terrorism in the U.S. took place on October
18, 1991. The International Terrorist Summit convened in Tehran decided
on a rejuvenated Jihad in the U.S. as part of the Iranian-led pan-Islamist
strategy of confronting Pax-Americana.

From December 1992 through January
1993, Iran conducted a strategic test of the entire concept of a US
operation. Former foreign minister Ibrahim Yazdi arrived on a secret
mission with a reconciliation initiative at the same time that Tehran
transmitted through back channels an explicit threat of "war between
the SAVAMA and the CIA." Yazdi's initiative was rebuffed. On January
24, 1993, Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani Iranian agent, killed several
people at the entrance to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia,
demonstrating that Tehran was serious. From January 22-26, 1993, Tehran
further tested the U.S. reaction system in the form of phone calls from
the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine threatening to blow
up a skyscraper in New York. Since there was no special reaction from
Washington, Tehran concluded that terrorist operations should proceed
as planned.

In 1999, 50 Islamic Muslim organizations
in America led by CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) threatened
various American interests, e.g., Burger King, Sprint, and Disney World
with boycotts and more. This was another indication of the scope of
the Islamist threats being leveled at America and directed by Arab interests
in the Middle East.

Western Europe

Islamist terrorist cells have
infiltrated West European countries to prepare the ground for military
operations together with fundamentalists and other extremists already
present in these countries. Most of these cells/outfits function with
the assistance of Iran. Some of the outfits are:

Fatah Revolutionary Council; leader Abu
Nidal

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
- General Command; leader Achmed Jibril

The Japanese Red Army

The Secret Irish Army

The Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia

The Lebanese Revolutionary Organization;
leader Mirshad Shabu

The Lebanese Hezbollah

Germany is a significant base
of Islamist fundamentalists and terrorists, including the Kurdish P.K.K.,
which is allied with Iran, members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other
fundamentalists - Turks, Pakistanis and Arabs - resident in Hamburg,
Munich and Cologne.

The first attempt to export Islamist
terrorism into France took place at Christmas 1994. Four terrorists
of the GIA (Armed Islamic Group), armed with dynamite and AK47's, hijacked
an Air France plane on the tarmac at the airport in Algiers.